


simurgh

by takingoffmyshoes



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Lady of the Lake - Freeform, Lady of the Lake Spoilers, and we both know it was dumb as shit, andrzej sapkowski knows what he did
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27977415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takingoffmyshoes/pseuds/takingoffmyshoes
Summary: As before, in the castle, Ciri doesn’t manage to travel far. As before, in the castle, it’s enough.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	simurgh

**Author's Note:**

> hey gang i've been binging the audiobooks like nobody's business and guess who got fucking _punked_ by book seven?? it's me

She feels the pain unfurl in her like a whip lash, sees the blood welling up along the lifeline of her palm, knows with unrelenting certainty that she’s already too late, and she _screams_. Screams with white-hot rage and unforgiving fury, screams every moment of desperation and hopelessness and loneliness and _fear_ that has plagued her in her too-long, too-short life, screams for the wasted days and hours and seconds in every world she tarried on, screams that for all she has learned, for all she has mastered, for all she has seen and been and done, it _cannot end like this._

She screams, balls up her bloody fist and _pushes_ , tears her way through space and time with more urgent desperation than she ever has before, focusing with every shred of her will on Geralt, on being with him, on standing shoulder to shoulder with him once more. 

He traveled to the end of the world for her – surely she can manage this much.

The nothingness isn’t velvety, this time, isn’t black. This time, she barely notices it. It’s little more than a cobweb to be brushed aside, and she charges through it recklessly, thoughtlessly, drawing her sword from its scabbard on her back as she does.

She bursts back into reality with _Swallow_ raised high over her head in a two-handed grip, swinging before she even finds her footing on solid ground. She’d hurled herself out of the saddle as she pushed, and uses the impetus of that motion now to lend strength to her strike. The sword is halfway through its trajectory by the time she finds enough purchase with her feet to add in the rotation of her hips, and she wants to scream again because now that she sees what she’s aiming for she knows it won’t be enough, not with the angle and the force and the reach, but she can’t change her course now and so she might as well commit to it, might as well give everything she has in this one final, desperate attempt.

She bursts back into reality, the street and the mob and the screaming flying together like shards of glass into a windowpane, and with the same scream that had started when she saw the blood on her palm she deflects the trident aiming for Geralt’s unprotected chest.

It’s not like a crossbow bolt, light enough to be sent sheering back through the air, and not like a blade that can be caught along its flat and jerked off course with a touch. It’s heavy and sturdy and already well on its way to its target, and she had landed too far from its wielder to turn it aside entirely, but she deflects it nonetheless, with a scream that shakes the very air and a fated sword that knows what it is to be destined. 

Instead of plunging in beneath his ribs, angled up towards his lungs, the wicked head of the trident gouges across Geralt’s thigh. She can hear the sickening sound of the impact behind her, feel Geralt stumbling back and down, but Ciri has already used the rebound of the parry to flick her sword up and around and across the throat of the loathsome little man who would dare to take her Witcher, her _father_ , from her. The blood sprays from his neatly severed arteries and Ciri turns a quick half pirouette, sword flying through the air. It meets another foe, another would-be attacker, cuts him down without mercy and turns to find the next. 

There is none. There is space all around her, at least three sword-lengths of empty air in every direction. Her scream tears off with a shriek like a falcon’s, the crescendo flaring out in a shockwave that sends the nearest of the mob staggering even further out of range and falling to their knees. In the ringing silence and stillness that follows, in the sea of frozen faces staring at her in terror and confusion, she sees what was, what could have been, and what will be. It’s only an instant, only a blinding, collapsing moment, but she knows. 

In that second, she sees Triss and Yennefer calling down fire and hail, sees Geralt bleeding out on the cobblestones, sees the dozens of deaths that have already occurred and the dozens more that still will, sees herself fighting off hate-drunk berserkers until she too is overwhelmed and cut down, sees herself reaching for the power that she’d renounced in the desert and tearing this stupid angry mob to pieces with it, sees all of it and _feels_ all of it too, all the grief and fury and despair. She could end this, raze the whole of Rivia and forget that she’s already had enough of killing and bloodshed and vengeance, could join with Triss and Yennefer to bring down the wrath of three powerful sorceresses who have already sacrificed far too much for the peace that these petty, selfish idiots are all too eager to destroy, and it would feel _good_. She could plunge her hands into the magical energy humming through the world and coat her arms in blood to the elbow, could start and restart again and again until every last murderous wretch in this street is dead by her will. 

She could do anything. She could _be_ anything. It could be euphoric. It could be nightmarish. It was. It will be. It is.

But then the moment ends, and the silence is overcome by the thunderous shouts and pounding feet pouring in from all quarters of the town, and everything that could be shudders and slides into place in the shape of what is.

It is enough.

Geralt is alive. 

It is enough.

Yarpen Zigren and Zoltan Chivay burst out of a nearby building, followed by Dandelion and someone she doesn’t recognize, and in the shelter they provide she drops to the ground beside Geralt. He’s pale and trembling, trying to stem the blood pouring from his thigh. Only one of the trident’s points had struck, and only along the outside of the leg, but it’s still a gruesome wound, the flesh torn open almost to the bone. He’s alive, though, and it’s enough.

“Ciri?” he asks, tight-jawed and rasping.

“Who else could have pulled that off?” she retorts, pushing his hands away from the wound to press down on it herself, leaning all of her weight onto it.

“Told you,” he mutters. “You ever do that again, I’m tanning your hide.” 

“You did,” she agrees. “Although, I believe, only about arrows. You never said anything about tridents.”

“Hmm. Three teeth,” he says. “At Kaer Morhen, you said. Me and Coën, we’d be killed by teeth. When I saw the trident, I knew.”

She leans over him, pushing down sharply, almost violently, and his eyes fly open. Hot blood is running between her fingers, coating her palms, but his golden eyes are bright and sharp and oh gods, she’d thought she’d never see them again. “Haven’t you learned,” she grits out, her own eyes starting to fill and blur, “that destiny isn’t enough? That something _more_ is needed?”

Despite everything, despite the sweaty pallor of his skin and the hitching gasping of his breath, he smiles. “I’m starting to.”

**Author's Note:**

> once I’m less emo about this I may write more, either of the immediate aftermath or the more distant future, bc guess what! I refuse to let my faves die, and ciri and geralt are gonna spend so much time looking at the sky and being emotionally vulnerable with each other you won’t even fucking believe it


End file.
